Join us for National Day of Civic Hacking

Code for Tulsa, the city’s local brigade of the national Code for America organization, will unite local government agencies and software developers, as well as the EPA and NASA – at this year’s National Day of Civic Hacking event, this coming Saturday June 6th 8:00am to 5:00pm at the Fly Loft in downtown Tulsa. Code for Tulsa Community Organizer Luke Crouch says, “There will be activities for programmers, designers, and local experts to help improve our community. Anyone can come by and participate.”

The goal of Code for Tulsa is to include seasoned coders as well as anyone interested in learning or collaborating, using open, public data for civic benefit. For those not clear on Code for Tulsa’s mission, a relatable example of what they do is the Food on the Move app, created at the group’s CodeAcross event this past February by Joe Watkins and Taylor Hanson. The app works as registration and a notification system for the nonprofit organization. “Ultimately,” Joe says, “ we will integrate data from it into HealthAround.me in order to study our impact in neighborhoods over time.

The success of Code for Tulsa has had a positive impact on our local government. Mayor Dewey Bartlett, one of Code for Tulsa’s biggest supporters says, “Many thanks go to the people at Code for Tulsa and all they do to connect the city with its residents. I’m committed to using meaningful data to improve the lives of those who live and visit our great city. If you have ideas that could be helpful or you’d just like to see how we are partnering with Code for Tulsa to bring you better services with better real time data, I encourage you to attend and engage at the National Day of Civic Hacking on June 6th.”

G.T. Bynum, city councilman is also an advocate, he states “Open, public data represents democratic opportunity to me. It provides governments with the opportunity to bring a larger pool of citizens into a space of knowledgeable decision making. This movement in Tulsa is an opportunity for national leadership.”

Scott Phillips, local business owner and volunteer for Code for Tulsa is hopeful that, “The potential impact from civic hacking will give citizens transparency a voice and ownership. Tulsa is one of the top five cities in this movement.”